


A fairy comes to land

by Morbane



Category: No Flying in the House - Betty Brock
Genre: Childhood, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Fae & Fairies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:56:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2811122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beatrice doesn't know what to think when Annabel's parents turn out to be real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A fairy comes to land

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hhertzof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhertzof/gifts).



The sun still shone well above the houses when Charles the chauffeur delivered Beatrice to her gate one spring afternoon. Beatrice had been visiting Annabel after school, but she had asked to go home a little early. At Annabel's house, she wasn't allowed to do anything exciting, like making a tower of chairs and climbing to the top, or tying a rope made of knotted sheets around the banister at the third-storey landing and pretending to be a Himalayan explorer as she and Annabel climbed up the stairs hand over hand.

They couldn't do things like that because Annabel had been sick for a while. She was getting much better, but she was often listless and sad. Sometimes Beatrice asked to go home early not because she was restless, but because Annabel's sadness was catching. Beatrice wasn't sure what to do with Annabel's sadness.

Sometimes she told Annabel jokes. Annabel would respond with a quiet smile. Beatrice supposed that ought to be as good as a laugh, when Annabel was so sick, but it didn't feel that way. Not when she thought of how Clara and Eleanor at school would roar.

She'd just thought of one now. They'd been talking about Gloria, and Annabel had been saying how like a real mother she was. Of course Beatrice didn't believe that, but she really ought to tell Annabel that Gloria was her fairy _dog_ mother!

Mostly Beatrice didn't mention Gloria to Annabel, unless Annabel brought her up first. Annabel's illness had begun when Gloria had disappeared. But maybe she would anyway. Maybe if Annabel laughed at that, it would show that she was really, truly better. Maybe she'd come back to school soon.

Collecting the mail at her gate, Beatrice walked up her front steps, past Algernon the cat, who was napping in patches of sunlight that fell between the oak tree's leaves, and opened her door. Her mother was in the kitchen, laying out a tray of cookies. "Ooooh," said Beatrice.

"Did Mrs. Vancourt's cook give you anything to eat after school?" Beatrice's mother asked, taking off her oven mittens and giving Beatrice a hug.

"Ye-es," said Beatrice reluctantly, looking at the cookies.

"Well, we won't have any cookies now," Mrs. Cox said, "but we will all have some after dinner. How was Annabel?"

"She was okay, I guess," Beatrice said.

Her mother got down a jar of sugar to sprinkle the cookies with, and looked expectantly at her. When she didn't say anything else, her mother continued, "And how was school?"

That was better. "We started work on the mural today," she explained. "The second-graders drew the outlines for everything and we get to fill them in. Mike McGlasky got chalk all over elbows and his shoes."

"You didn't, though," said her mother.

"That's right," Beatrice said. "Even when we had to kneel on the ground to draw, I knelt on my apron."

It felt strange to come home and tell her mother things about school that she hadn't said to Annabel. But Beatrice had to be so careful around Annabel, lately, that Annabel might as well be a grown-up too.

The phone rang just then. 

"Go on," Beatrice's mother said, pointing at one sugary hand with the other.

Beatrice went to pick it up. "Cox household, Beatrice speaking," she said politely.

"Beatrice, it's me!" Annabel said. 

"Oh!" Beatrice said.

"You'll never believe what's happened!" Annabel said. "My parents have come back!"

"Oh!" said Beatrice again.

She thought she was as surprised as it was possible for anyone to be, but she was wrong, because Annabel continued, "And you'll never believe it - Mrs. Vancourt is my grandmother!"

After a moment she added, "Beatrice?"

"Okay," Beatrice said faintly. "Gee whiz."

"You have to meet my mother," Annabel continued, sounding more excited than she had in months. "You'll love her!"

"Sure," Beatrice said. "That's amazing, Annabel."

"Yeah," Annabel said. "Okay, I have to go, but I had to let you know! Maybe you can come around tomorrow and meet them."

"I'll ask my mom," Beatrice said. "I'll call you back."

"Okay, goodbye!"

"Bye."

She put down the phone and stood staring at it for a moment. 

"What is it, darling?" Beatrice's mother asked.

"Annabel says her parents have come home," Beatrice said, "and Mrs. Vancourt is her grandmother. So I guess..." and then she trailed off. Mrs. Vancourt couldn't be Annabel's grandmother on her father's side, because Annabel's surname was Tippens. But Mrs. Vancourt couldn't be Annabel's grandmother on her mother's side, because Annabel said that her mother was a fairy princess. And of course that couldn't be true, because no one's mother was a fairy princess, but Beatrice hadn't believed that Annabel's parents would come home, either, and now they had.

Her mother looked as confused as she did. "Why, it's just like a story," she said, laughing a little. 

"It is?" Beatrice said. She wasn't sure that was a good thing.

"Well, if I read it in a novel, I wouldn't be a bit surprised," Mrs. Cox said. Then she must have realised how worried Beatrice was feeling. "It's all right," she said gently. "Sometimes, you know, real things are stranger than any story. And stories have to come from something. You'll hear all about it from Annabel soon, I'm sure."

* * *

Annabel's parents certainly looked real.

Annabel's mother was very short, and very pretty, and her hair was soft and blonde like Annabel's, but thinner, or lighter, or - whatever it was that made it float about in the faintest breeze as if it were not ordinary hair, but dandelion fluff.

Beatrice looked at her and tried to decide. Was this how fairies looked - like they could be human - or was Annabel's mother too real to be a fairy? She certainly didn't look _ordinary_. 

When she rushed over to Beatrice, it made Beatrice think of a leaf being blown from an autumn pile, and when she spoke, Beatrice thought she heard bells. "Beatrice," she said. "May I call you that? I've heard so much about you." She held out her hands.

"Of course," Beatrice said. No grown-up had ever asked permission to use her first name before. "It's very nice to meet you..."

"I am Felicia Tippens."

"It's very nice to meet you, Mrs. Tippens."

"Such good manners," said Mrs. Vancourt, from behind Beatrice. "But I don't approve of that name."

Annabel was standing behind her mother, smiling. Beatrice looked at her for help, but Annabel only shrugged.

"It is her legal name," Annabel's father - who must be Mr. Tippens - said. "Let's make one change at a time! And being all together as a family again is a very big change."

Mr. Tippens was very handsome, but not in the way that Mrs. Tippens was pretty. Beatrice had seen people just as handsome as Mr. Tippens in the movies or in department-store catalogues. His voice was ordinary too.

Mrs. Tippens smiled at Mrs. Vancourt. "More of my enemies know the name Tippens than they know the name Vancourt," she said. "There are good reasons to change it, I know."

_Enemies!_

"Well, never mind all that," Mrs. Vancourt said. "Why don't you two take Beatrice and Annabel upstairs and show Beatrice all those driftwood animals."

In one of the rooms of the great house that Beatrice had never seen opened before, a crowd of carved animals were laid out on the floor. Beatrice and Annabel got down on their knees to look at them.

"This one is my favourite," Annabel said, picking up a carved lizard with a frilled mane made out of seaweed. 

"That one has an older brother with a bad temper," Mr. Tippens said, reaching towards the back to pick up another lizard, more roughly carved, with a lopsided face. "I saw how he was turning out, so I didn't finish him. But I've come to be fond of him all the same."

"Did you make all of these?" Beatrice asked.

"That's right," Mr. Tippens said. He tapped the bad-tempered lizard. "This was one of my first."

Beatrice picked up a cat-like carving with a funny pattern of spots and a thick tail. "That's a snow leopard," Mr. Tippens told her. "The markings on its side are made by charring. I heated a piece of metal in a fire and then pressed the marks in."

"Have you ever seen a snow leopard?" Beatrice asked. She imagined Mr. and Mrs. Tippens exploring in snowy mountains, just as in Annabel and Beatrice's staircase game. Maybe Annabel's parents had been lost somewhere exploring and that was why they'd taken so long to come home to her.

"Yes," Mr. Tippens said. "I saw one at the zoo when I was just a bit older than you and Annabel."

"Oh," said Beatrice, a bit disappointed.

Annabel said, "You learned to carve on the island, didn't you?"

"Yes, and build, and fish, and weave," Mrs. Tippens said, putting her arm around Mr. Tippens.

"So you were shipwrecked!" Beatrice said. She was so excited that it just came out.

"No, we weren't shipwrecked," Mr. Tippens said. "But I know many shipwreck stories." He picked up another carved animal, a large shark. "Imagine! Before our travellers even arrive at a desert island, they have to avoid the dangers of the seas..."

Mr. Tippens was good at telling stories, and talking in funny voices. He could make a carved lion seem friendly or frightening. Mrs. Tippens added bits about how animals behaved. They knew an awful lot, and their stories were wonderful. Beatrice went home aching with laughter and secretly fearing alligators under her bed - or worse, tarantulas.

"What were Annabel's parents like?" Mrs. Cox asked. Beatrice could see that her mother was almost as curious as she had been.

"They were wonderful," Beatrice said. "They are just like Annabel."

Annabel, too, told amazing stories that stayed in Beatrice's mind long after she'd heard them; and now that Beatrice had met Annabel's mother, she wondered if maybe sometimes she had heard bells in Annabel's voice, too.

Only, because Annabel's parents were grown-ups, they would know the difference between stories and real things. It wasn't that Annabel told lies, of course. But she believed the strangest things.

Now that Annabel's parents had come home, maybe Annabel wouldn't be so fanciful. After all, Beatrice knew what her own parents would say if she told them she was a fairy! Grown-ups just didn't go in for make-believe the way Annabel did.

Maybe it had been a bit silly of Beatrice to ask if Mr. and Mrs. Tippens had been shipwrecked. That was kind of like a story too. Shipwrecks happened, but not to anybody Beatrice knew, the way no one she knew was a pirate or a circus acrobat or a mountain explorer. 

But Mr. and Mrs. Tippens must have spent a long time on an island if Mr. Tippens had learned to do all those things. Why was that? Annabel had always believed her parents would come home, but why hadn’t she known what were they were? 

Maybe Annabel’s parents were spies. Annabel’s mother had said they even had enemies! Only, surely spies wouldn’t say that. Spies would try to make you think they were ordinary people.

So what kind of ordinary people had enemies?

Had Annabel’s mother been joking?

The more Beatrice thought about it, the less certain she was of anything. Annabel’s parents were glamorous and funny and exciting, but they were confusing, too.

* * *

Mrs. Vancourt and Mrs. Cox were old friends. They were often at the same dinners and receptions together, because Mrs. Cox loved to hold galas and bazaars and other events, and Mrs. Vancourt was one of her most distinguished guests. 

“I think I’ll invite Mrs. Vancourt’s daughter-in-law to one of my dinner-parties,” Mrs. Cox said at breakfast one morning. “She must want to meet people.”

Because this was supposed to be a small party, Beatrice and Annabel were allowed to stay up and attend, and wear their nicest dresses, and talk to the guests.

Before long, Annabel started yawning, and Mrs. Cox and Mrs. Tippens tucked her in to Beatrice’s bed to nap. Beatrice stood in the hall and watched people through the doorway to the parlour. Mrs. Tippens seemed to be very popular. She was often in a large group of people. Beatrice wanted to hear what she was saying, but it was hard to get closer without one of the grown-ups noticing her and trying to talk to her instead. 

"Shouldn't you be in bed, dear?" said Mrs. Gerrald, one of Beatrice's mother's best friends.

"Oh, no," Beatrice said, which wasn't lying, because her mother hadn't told her to go to bed yet. "I'm helping." She went over to the sideboard to pick up a mostly-empty tray of food. To her relief, this seemed to work. Mrs. Gerrald turned in another direction.

The tray was large and awkward. Beatrice started to put it down again, but then saw that two more of her mother's friends were looking her way. So, instead, she carried it to the kitchen. She took the last stuffed mushroom from the tray to reward herself for being helpful after all.

In order to avoid Mrs. Gerrald, Beatrice went straight through the kitchen and into the narrow passage beyond it to get back to the room where all the guests were. Then she stopped, because she could hear voices around the corner. She wasn't sure which guests they belonged to.

"You don't suppose she actually believes those things," she heard one woman say, with a little laugh.

"Who can say," another said. "Best hope not, for everyone's sakes! But what an embarrassment for Mrs. Vancourt." She sounded - mean.

Beatrice backed quietly into the kitchen again, feeling as though there was a weight in her stomach likely to drag it all the way to her feet. Were they talking about Mrs. Tippens?

"I've changed my mind," she told Mrs. Gerrald. "I'm very sleepy." 

Being fussed over by her mother and put to bed next to Annabel - "I'll try not to wake you, darling, when it's time for her to go," made feel a little better, and when she lay down, she realised she _was_ very tired after all. 

But when she woke up the next morning, she wished she and Annabel had both been awake to talk. 

Only, what could she say to Annabel? She couldn't ask her if her parents were strange. That sounded far too rude. 

The next afternoon, when they were out on Annabel's lawn after school, she finally asked, "What do your parents say about you being a fairy?"

"Oh," Annabel said. "They say I'm not one."

Well _that_ was all right. That was what Beatrice had expected them to say. 

"But my mother says she can still take me flying," Annabel added happily. "She says I'm still light enough to lift."

Back came the sinking-stomach feeling. "Oh," said Beatrice. 

Annabel scrunched up her face. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to boast. Maybe my mother can take you flying too."

"That's all right," Beatrice said politely, and Annabel looked relieved.

"We're going to the beach next weekend," she continued. "Would you like to come? You said my mother would take me when she came home, and you were right." 

Beatrice didn't know how to say no, because until Annabel had asked, she hadn't known she didn't want to go. "Okay," she said unhappily. 

She had never really minded before when Annabel talked about being a fairy or having fairy parents, or claimed that her dog Gloria talked. That was just like Clara still believing in the Tooth Fairy, even though she was one of the oldest in Beatrice's class at school. 

But grown-ups were supposed to know what was real and what wasn't. 

That night at supper, she asked her mother, "Can people say something that's not true, but not be lying? And not be joking either?"

"What a funny question!" Mrs. Cox said. "There's all sorts of ways. They might have the wrong information. Say you were looking at a map that was drawn in Europe before America was discovered. Whoever drew the map would have all kinds of strange ideas about the shape of the rest of the world."

Beatrice thought of Annabel saying that her mother was Princess of the Western Kingdom.

"It's not quite like that, I think," she said.

"Well, what is it like?" her mother asked.

"It's like... when someone says something that everyone knows isn't true."

"They could be crazy," her father said, smiling.

"Harold!" said Mrs. Cox. "Though I suppose that is true," she added to Beatrice. "Someone who is mad sees the world very differently to everyone else. Darling, if you meet anyone like that, would you tell me, please? They might not be safe. Or there might be a good reason for whatever it is they say, but you should still tell me."

"Is there any other way someone would talk like that?" Beatrice said. She didn't want to think about Annabel's parents being crazy.

"Well," Beatrice's father said. "If it's something everyone else knows is true, maybe it's everyone else who's wrong."

But what if that included Beatrice's very own parents?

* * *

No one seemed to mind that Beatrice was quiet as Mr. and Mrs. Tippens, Annabel, and Beatrice drove out to the beach. They didn't go in Mrs. Vancourt's old, polished town car, but in a smart little blue car that Mr. Tippens said he'd just bought.

"I need the practice," Mr. Tippens said to Beatrice, winking at her. But at least he didn't drive very fast.

Annabel's mother and father talked about their trips into town, and about different towns they had visited over the sea. They didn't talk about fairies or magic, or anything else strange.

When they arrived at the beach, Beatrice took her shoes and socks off and ran down to the water to splash a bit. The water was terribly cold, so she ran back - stubbing her left toes on a shell that stuck halfway out of the sand. "Ow!" she said. 

"But look," Annabel said, following after her. She bent down to dig up the shell, which turned out to have lovely purplish markings. 

"All right, I'll keep it," Beatrice decided.

"That saves the next person from stumbling on it!" Mr. Tippens said, but kindly. "You're performing a public service."

Annabel's parents brought out a kite, and Mr. Tippens helped Annabel and Beatrice fly it. Annabel got tired of it quickly, and started to make a sand castle. When the breeze died down and flying the kite wasn't so much fun any more, Beatrice helped dig a huge moat. 

But Annabel's mother kept looking out to sea.

"Look," Mrs. Tippens said at last to Annabel. Mr. Tippens looked up quickly too. Beatrice climbed up from the sand castle moat and looked the way they were pointing.

"I don't see anything," Annabel said.

"Keep looking," Mrs. Tippens said.

"There's something red there," Beatrice said at last. "Bobbing out in the waves."

"That's right," Mr Tippens said.

"What is it?" Beatrice asked.

But Mr. and Mrs. Tippens didn't answer. Annabel's mother ran down the beach and into the waves - as if she didn't notice the cold at all - and called out, "Gloria!"

Beatrice's mouth dropped open.

But when Annabel's mother came back, a familiar, little, white dog rode on her shoulder, and in her hands, she carried a sailboat that was no longer than the distance from Beatrice's elbow to her fingertips.

"Oh, Gloria!" Annabel cried. "I missed you so much!" She looked up at her parents. "Did you know Gloria was coming back today?"

"Yes, indeed," Mr. Tippens said.

Then Gloria and Mrs. Tippens spoke together - "We wanted it to be a surprise," Mrs. Tippens said, and at the same time, _Gloria's mouth opened_ and she said,

"I'm afraid I had to take the long way around."

Gloria _talked_ , just as Annabel had always said she did, and she had returned to Annabel by sailing in her own tiny boat over the sea.

Removing the last doubt from Beatrice's mind, Gloria looked at her, and winked.

It wasn't make-believe. It was real, all of it - fairies and enemies and princesses and flying. And it was funny, Beatrice thought, how similar fear and delight could feel.

**Author's Note:**

> With deep gratitude to inevitableentresol for your beta comments and encouragement.


End file.
